Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

Opinion

The opinions presented below are solely the views of the author and do not represent the views of The News-Letter. If you are a member of the Hopkins community looking to submit a piece or a letter to the editor, please email opinions@jhunewsletter.com.

It’s February, which means that many fraternities and sororities at Hopkins and at other colleges nationwide have just recruited their newest pledge class. To those new recruits, we extend our congratulations. Many students find a sense of community ...

Last week, on the anniversary of the Parkland shooting, media outlets reflected on the strides in gun control that we’ve made as a result of the survivors’ movement. I want to add to the conversation by reflecting on what we can do better as we go forward.

I am not your Korean fetish.” That was the Tinder bio I wrote last summer, which came with some decent pictures of myself and a surprise painting of Judith slaying Holofernes. A not-so-subtle finger to the patriarchy.

Last week, Senator Antonio Hayes introduced a new bill in the Maryland General Assembly: the Community Safety and Strengthening Act. This bill, SB 793, and its correspondent in the Maryland House of Representatives, HB 1094, includes the University’s second bid for a private police force.

Next week, the Student Government Association (SGA) will hold an impeachment trial against Executive President Noh Mebrahtu behind closed doors. SGA members introduced articles of impeachment at their latest weekly meeting, but not before telling one of our reporters to leave the room. That same day, SGA sent an email advertising a Students Against Private Police rally with the subject line “ICE Protest Tomorrow!” And last semester, it had to pass a bill to stop members from using social media, texting, web surfing and shopping during meetings.

In high school I nursed wild ambitions of publishing a fantasy novel. The plot was muddy, but I knew my heroine. Her name was Elizia. She was a woman of color, and she spoke with all the outrageous, cringeworthy angst of a Brontë character. She was brave and intelligent and a born leader, a liberator of women and the poor who also dabbled with sorcery.

For centuries, the world’s oldest democracy has depended on a productive tension between two major parties. When the political pendulum in Washington swings from right to left and back again, the minority party knows that they will get another turn. Historically the ruling party likewise recognized that they would soon be in the minority, and this led to a government of restraint — one which prioritized stability and order over short-term policy victories. The two-party system enabled Americans across the political spectrum to trust that their representatives would act in good faith.

Although people of color and those who live in low-income communities generally have the lowest carbon footprint, they often live in areas with the worst air quality and are most susceptible to flooding or other weather hazards. Meanwhile, those of us who have done the most to aggravate climate change – higher-income individuals, mega-corporations and business magnates – have the resources to avoid the consequences of our actions.

As we begin Black History Month, it is an optimal time to reflect on the noble efforts of African Americans to gain legal and constitutional rights for minorities during the Civil Rights Movement. While considering the actions taken by the brave men and women of this community, it is important for us to note that the success of the movement was partially due to the influential work of students. From participating in walkouts and sit-ins to organizing and leading protests, youth helped to spearhead the Civil Rights Movement.

Black gay actor and activist Jussie Smollett told police that he was attacked on Jan. 29 by two men shouting racist and homophobic slurs. In a follow-up interview, Smollett said one of them also yelled, “This is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country.” On Monday, the Chicago Tribune reported that Smollett had received a letter a week before saying, “You will die black fag,” with “MAGA” written as the return address.

This weekend, hundreds of underclassmen will go through the process known as formal recruitment in the hopes of joining one of the five Panhellenic sororities at Hopkins. For many students across the country, Greek life is a crucial aspect of their college experience. It’s where they meet their closest friends, find personal and academic support and make professional connections. But for some, the actual recruitment process evokes none of those positive qualities.

“Ever to confess that you are bored means you have no inner resources.” This is a line in John Berryman’s “Dream Song 14” that I kept scrawling on pieces of scrap paper this past winter. My dad had once told me almost the exact same thing when I was seven, sitting in the back of the car and whining about how bored I was. Since then, I can’t remember a time I admitted to him that I was bored.

As an exchange student brought up in Japan, it was a whole new idea that people can feel threatened by police officers. By taking sociology classes, participating in local volunteer activities and talking with minority students at Hopkins, I learned that people in Baltimore -- especially minorities -- regard police officers not as their protectors, but as potential threats because of their discriminatory, unjust policing.

Last Friday, many of us received an email that Hopkins had purchased the building that currently houses the Newseum, a museum in Washington, D.C. that is dedicated to promoting freedom of speech. Located on Pennsylvania Avenue, the building is positioned at the heart of the nation’s capital and will primarily be used to centralize the University’s graduate programs, including the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

When Johns Hopkins established the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889, he sought to provide quality healthcare and serve as an invaluable resource to the surrounding community. Yet recent reports on the conditions at the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore illustrate an appalling failure to carry on our founder’s mission.

The week before Thanksgiving, Michael Bloomberg donated $1.8 billion to Hopkins, the largest ever donation to an academic institution, for use in financial aid for qualified low and middle-income students. In accepting the donation, University President Ronald J. Daniels stated that the University wanted to “recruit more first-generation and low-income students and provide them with full access to every dimension of the Johns Hopkins experience.”

If you listened to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro following his 2018 “re-election,” you would probably think Venezuela was a utopian country with strong democratic institutions or at least a country on the right track. Maduro triumphantly proclaimed a “heroic, beautiful, popular victory, forged in the struggle.” When asked about his autocratic tendencies, Maduro snapped back, asking “Do they really think that people here are so submissive that they would put up with a dictator?”

We hope that our community is encouraged to have difficult conversations about socioeconomic and educational inequity. And we hope that we use Bloomberg’s donation as a springboard to think critically about the pervasive elitism and exclusivity in higher education.